


The Duel

by Keenir



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: (and it did), (losing Sauron didn't help), ...or a move in that direction, All errors are entirely my own, Gen, Orc Culture, Pre-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2794325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years ago, an Orc challenged Tauriel to a riddle duel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Duel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mira_Jade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mira_Jade/gifts).



> want to get this out before I see Battle of the Five Armies.  
> perhaps this has lingered too long in my brain...its itself begun to decay.

**TAURIEL**

_It was extra devious_.

That was the only explanation Tauriel could think of, for how she had come to end up in a pitfall trap.  One designed to leave its captured alive, though not designed with the agility and athleticism of an Elf in mind.

 _And I was prideful_ , she admitted to herself, having been on her way after having a triumphant smile at the sight of a Dwarf departing from where it had been clotting up the edge of her woods.  Her lord Thranduil's woods, but she doubted the Dwarf cared.

It hadn't been that difficult to persuade the Dwarf to pack up and leave its camp at forest's edge.  _And I never disobeyed my lord Thranduil's command that no Elf shall be seen by outsiders - always, I obeyed._ And if the Dwarf had left in an angry huff because his things kept disappearing and being moved about...well, that was not because he had seen an Elf.

Tauriel had not gone directly home afterwards, as she had sensed the presence of an even worse trespasser in the woods, and she had gone to investigate, to scout out what was making or had made an inroads into the forest.

She had found a few branches wilting and the ground slightly aching.  The leaves on the ground, they hadn't felt more than lightly tinged by the decay evil creatures tended to drip upon the landscape.  _More as though a spider or warg had wandered through days ago, than any sort of work had been labored upon the woods by wicked hands.  And if I couldn't handle striding across a drop or two of lingering decay, how could I expect to be able to fight against the beasts when needed?  
_

_And then I fell, the ground lying and giving way beneath me._

She reached up, ready to use the roots and cut branches (those still on the ground at the mouth of the pitfall) to make her way back to the surface, skills refined with tree branches still attached to their boles and trunks now about to serve to make good her escape -

When an Orc appeared at the edge of the pitfall trap, looking down at her.

_Come a little closer, Orc.   I'll see to it you die before you hit bottom._

"You're an Elf," it says.

* * *

**ORC**

An elf stands in my trap.

I had thought my pit trap would ensnare a Man, an Ent, or perhaps one of those shifting sort - even a bear would not have sensed the depths of the ground's falseness.  I underestimated that assumption - clearly, else how to explain the presence within it of an Elf?

 _We had glories aplenty, and pride in ourselves. No longer were we measuring ourselves against the stars and every other singing thinking thing. We were_ **Orchs - Orcs** _, and we reveled. Then came the fall of Annatar, the end of the guidance of Mairon. And we nearly ended there ourselves._

 _Only our own_ mod _\- our courage and more - only that kept us moving, from one battlefield to another, never shying from battle with our cousins the Elves or any other things. But never could we rise to the permanence of empires, kingdoms, coalitions, or villages. Inevitably, we trip over our own feet, or over the corpses of our downed brothers. And when we trip, we fall, one defeat following another on the tail of another which trots alongside a disaster like an overeager warg puppy. And from there, we must begin anew, again, and again. Or lose more before we grip victory for another while. How much we would surrender for the security of Mairon._

 _Losing...usually against those who had not been taken and reshaped.  Elves._ "You are an Elf," I say.

"Observant, you are," she says. I assume that is the local form of the language Elves have now.

I look at her and she meets my gaze. She could move herself to escape - she was beginning to do so when I returned to check my trap - but I know and she knows that the fraction of a moment when she emerges from the trap, would be a long enough unguarded moment that I could dispatch her. Elves and Orcs are of equal capability when compared evenly, though neither half of our rivened race cares to be even with the other half. She could potentially end my existing, but that vulnerability could be her end first, and she knows it and I know it.

She reaches for her arrows.

"I offer you a deal, Elf," I say, and see her pause, though her face turns more deadly.

"I accept no deals from evil," is her answer.

"When stars strike the ground, they do not walk away," I quote the ancient Orc proverb, with no intent of telling her where it stems from. "I offer a simple contest. If you win, I stand here and not stop your escape."

"And should you win?"

Then the outcome would incline to favor me, obviously.  Or...there is talk of a sorcerer of great power, one with a link to Annatar himself - perhaps offer her, this Elf, as the first new Orc in a long long time.  "Have you so little self-faith, Elf?" But she does not react in a way appropriate for someone hearing such a classic joke.

Her expression twists into something momentarily Orcish, but then she appears stricken, and schools her features. "What contest do you offer, Orc?"

"A flyting. Simple riddles."

"Then I accept," and her posture echoes her face and tone: superiority.

I was going to let this draw out - I've never spoken to an Elf before - but faced with such a stereotype (and here I thought it was only in the moral tales that such simplifications dwelled), I recite a prophecy that few Orcs know the answer to...and no non-Orcs know the answer at all. "I live and breathe, I carry the Master's Will. Seen and unnoticed, unseen and with clarity. Beneath the sod I live, to war and fire I go. What am I?"  _Victory is mine, sayeth I._

* * *

**TAURIEL**

_This_ is what Orcs do with the time they don't spend fighting?  Legolas will hurt himself laughing, I've no doubt.

I sense something tiny and...I can't really say _familiar_ , as I've sensed it before, but never watched one before.  Out the corner of my eye, I spy a worm breaking through the earthen wall, only to be followed and eaten by a mole which promptly retreats. _Some things seek to escape the light, even its possibility, while they are still in shadow._   I frown.  'Beneath the sod.'  Could it be so easy?    "Hobbytla," I answer. "You are an earth-dweller."  _Surely no surprise that it will be a Dwarf which serves the lord of Orcs.  Or, perhaps all of the Dwarves?_

He looks stricken, and collapses to his feet.

Wrapping his hands around his own throat, he hisses at me to "Go!" and I make my escape from this trap while he continues strangling himself.

My feet on solid ground, my back to the forest, I see him reaching for some bladed weapon and turning it towards his spine. _Melkor and Sauron warped the Elves who became Orcs,_ I've always known that...but this is further proof of how far they were taken.

Before I leave, taking flight for the walls and spaces of home, I put an arrow in his skull.

**Author's Note:**

> Flytings were a sort of verbal duellings common to both the Norse and Old English peoples.
> 
> Mod generally referred to bravery, both the good sort and the not-so-good sort (you can be _mod_ and foolish, just as you can be _mod_ and wise)...while _ofermod_ was generally translated "overconfidence."
> 
> Elves are usually in the trees, on rocks, or elsewhere aboveground...they may know each tree as individuals, but how often would they see an earthworm?
> 
> Orcs when we see them onscreen, are either in the service of Sauron (LOTR) or assembling to fight once more under his banner (Hobbit). So, what were the Orcs doing for all those centuries and Ages? Besides patching their wounds and getting ready for the next big fight.
> 
> Hobbytla was suggested, in one of the Lord of the Rings Appendixes, as a source for the word "Hobbit"...though a translation of it, as Tolkien noted there, comes out as "tunnel dweller." So Tauriel's assumption isn't off, really. And the Orc's desire to die before his boss can get his hands on him, too.  
> (yes, the entire fic was written to revolve around that one translation)


End file.
